A New MCM Kitchen: Part 2 Demo

Well, after Day 1 the demo is mostly complete.  It’s a bit surreal not having a kitchen or being able to walk into the room and throw my purse on the counter.  I’m adjusting to making coffee with my sister’s borrowed drip machine in the bathroom —kind of like a hotel!  I keep telling myself we’re on a vacation, sort of half nice hotel/half camping.  In the depths of the old kitchen I found a brand new cast iron pan that one of us must have received as a Christmas present one year.  No joke, the corner cabinet under the oven wall unit was longer than I am, so stuff would get tossed in there and unless I emptied the front layer and crawled in, there was no way anything was coming back out.  We used the pan to heat up leftover pasta on the backyard BBQ and ate outside with paper plates.  I kind of like not washing dishes! The kids think it’s funny to make toast and frozen waffles in the garage, and through it all we’re all keeping our sense of humor about the situation.

I am so amazed at how big the space is now!  Even before the demo, the kitchen was large.  Now with the soffits gone and with the glass hanging cabinet taken out the kitchen is enormous.  I can’t wait for how much we’re going to enjoy all the light coming in and when it’s finished the dining room and kitchen will be an amazing place to spend time in.

On the left is the view from when I walk in from the door from the living room.  The right is from the dining room.  I really love how the corner wall unit oven and the surrounding cabinets are gone!  That design took up a ton of space so it’s going to be a big change when our new cabinets go in and everything is square and cornered properly.

This drawing on the wall was unearthed by the construction crew.  It’s a rendering of the corner oven!  On the right is where the GE wall unit fridge lived.  We found two layers of old wallpaper on the bottom of the soffits.  One had a pattern of blue roses and the other was a pink and beige geometric pattern.

And, this picture was found during demo!  If anyone recognizes this handsome fellow let me know!

A New MCM Kitchen: Part 1

You guys, it’s happening tomorrow!  It’s KITCHEN DEMO TIME!!!!!  My heart is pounding, my palms are slightly sweaty, and I don’t know how I’m going to sleep tonight.

We moved in here 12 years ago and planned on doing a kitchen remodel within the first year or two. Like everything else in the house, it just never happened.  The sad thing is, is that our kitchen is a great space. It’s huge!  We cook several meals a day here, stand around and chit-chat, and have enjoyed the massive amounts of counter-top space.  The problem?  It’s not designed well and it’s falling apart.  Some tile is breaking away from the wall.  The old wall phone died and the line doesn’t work.  The cabinets are super deep but stuff gets shoved in there never to see the light of day.  Plus, the old counter-tops are so worn that everything leaves a permanent stain.

The floor is a waste land. It is from the 80’s and has lots of pores in it, which means just walking on it leaves gray smudges embedded all over it.  The old GE pink wall unit fridge — a super cool MCM piece — died a few months after we moved in and I never found out what happened to the shelves. They were simply missing.  We did replace the old dishwasher and the wall oven, plus the stove top range.  However, we purchased the cheapest ones we could find since we totally meant to demo the kitchen anyway.  Please, if you’re going to buy appliances, spring for something nice.  I could never fully wash off the grease and grime and over a decade of grossness has accumulated on the stove and oven.  Believe me, I tried soaking the stove parts in hot water and soap and bought and manufactured my own cleaning concoctions, but since the pieces were made with cruddy materials they just didn’t hold up to normal usage.

To top off my dissatisfaction is the constant stream of clutter on every surface.  If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I hate clutter because 1) My goal in life wasn’t to be a maid and pick up after everyone and 2) It gives me a headache.  There just isn’t a good place for stuff even though the space is huge!

Over the next coming weeks, I’ll document the progress. I don’t have any qualms about ripping out this kitchen (don’t worry I’m going to try to sell the GE wall unit fridge to someone who wants to use it for parts — if you live in the Detroit area and want it let me know and we’ll talk price) because I believe it’s 80’s era crap.  We worked with a wonderful interior designer, Rick Carmondy, who helped us design a real thoughtful space.  The soffits are coming down.  The old glass hanging cabinet that we’ve all crashed our heads into will be outta here, and that nasty floor is coming right up.

What we hope to accomplish is to end up with a space that is MCM inspired.  The cabinets are custom made by Mark Nixon and will have some great touches to them.   I’m really excited about a secret pull out drawer he built into the baseboards that will house a step ladder.  I’m 5 ft. tall and one day I will be too old to jump on top of the counters to reach high cupboards so this is a great solution.  The new fridge is going to be placed on the wall where the old hanging one lived, and I’ve got free reign to come up with some clever options for the blank wall.  We are getting terrazzo floor tiles!  And, to top it all off, we went for Formica counter-tops.  Yup.  No granite for this lady.  Never liked it, never will.  I think it all looks pretty much the same and while I do respect how durable it is, it will totally clash with my terrazzo floors.  Wait until you see the tile!  We have a nice surprise and it will make our kitchen really unique with an interesting MCM flair.

While cleaning out all of our stuff to store in the basement, I snapped some pics of the old space.  Sure, there are a lot of good memories associated with this kitchen.  We’ve had many parties here with good friends and family, I prepared food for my babies here and bathed them in the sink when they were too tiny to go in the bathtub.  So many art projects have been created on these counters and my husband and I have done our best thinking while standing around drinking coffee.  But, it’s time to move on and create something amazing.

And for some memories:

Soccer Girl!